Written by Grace Jacovides and Victor Si Thu
On the 26th of September 2023, Britain’s former home secretary, Suella Braverman, delivered a scathing review of the dangers of ‘uncontrolled and illegal migration’. In her address to the American Enterprise Institute, Braverman actively raises suspicion around the ‘dogma’ of multiculturalism.1 A concept she feels is a source of great insecurity for both the British national identity and that of the wider Western world. This self-professed anxiety is vividly displayed through her employment of a grouping technique whereby countries like ‘Britain, America, France, and Germany’ supposedly stand in opposition to those of a differing socio-political, economic, religious, and cultural composition.2 In other words, an active dichotomy is constructed whereby the West is pitted against the supposedly perverse faculties of the non-West. Set against the backdrop of the Conservative party’s ‘stop the boats’ initiative, Braverman’s speech ultimately seeks to warn against ‘the incomer’ and their capacity to potentially pervert the British national identity.3 It is through this racialised lens that an ideal Britishness is defined, institutionalised, and thus sustained. Likewise, race plays an integral role in determining the rigidity of how Britishness is defined in the face of incoming change. Why, therefore, is cultural assimilation with non-Western identities such a cause for concern for British nationalists? The answer lies within the internal mechanisms that inform nationalist thought and their war against multiculturalism.
For those actively engaging in nationalist discourse, multiculturalism creates equality across all varieties of identity found in Britain. For nationalists, this assumption is a direct attack on the ‘natural’ British identity and fuels their desire to reassert beliefs and culture directly associated with British exceptionalism. Far-right groups such as Traditional Britain provide an insight into this obsession with restoring Britain’s “rich national character” and aim to create a space for “traditional conservative values” to flourish.4 Here, we see a willingness to promote supposedly ancient traditions that, according to Traditional Britain, have been a core aspect of British identity. Examples include loyalty to kinship, the family, hierarchy, truth and excellence.5 References to conservative ideas such as the family unit, an institution that has transformed in the past few decades, demonstrate how fearful these groups are of social change. However, preservation is a secondary aim. Instead, the predominant focus is on the eradication of egalitarianism and liberal ideas such as multiculturalism.6 Whilst Traditional Britain overtly expresses an extremist attachment to nationalistic views, this rejection of multiculturalism is a common theme across far right and nationalist discourse. In more mainstream politics, multiculturalism is heralded as a key signifier of the debasement of social values and a direct attack on British identity. Furthermore, the reduction of diversity and multiculturalism to a liberal obsession with wokeness allows ‘true’ British culture and identity to become weaponised, invoking imagery of the ‘uncivilised barbarian’, which poses an existential threat to the British ‘natural’ order.
Often acting in the name of ‘survival’, nationalism operates from a place of high normativity where its thought process is shaped by an equally normative set of assumptions. This claim to survival has no doubt endured within Britain’s nationalist discourse. Social and cultural change is seen as an attack against Britishness. More specifically, the possibility of change to what an ideal “British society” looks and sounds like.7 These apprehensions vividly mirror the concerns of ethnos-based nationalism. This version of nationalism seeks to measure and define social acceptability within the host country based on ethnography. In other words, Britain’s brand of ethno-nationalism aims to politicise the foreigner by binding prejudiced assumptions to their respective cultures, languages, and, perhaps more importantly, their skin colour.8 A state-sponsored system of differentiation thus ensues where some foreigners are considered socially acceptable, whilst others are deemed as a source of existential threat. This sentiment is clearly identifiable within Braverman’s speech, where the issue of ‘integration’ into British society seems to be an issue of the non-West.9 As a matter of fact, little is mentioned about the impact of Western migrants in Britain. Braverman deliberately paints the West as a unitary entity that must fend against the ‘toxic’ multiculturalism from realms beyond.10 This line of reasoning may sound like a thing of the past, but it continues to inform real-life experiences within contemporary Britain.
The direct implication of this nationalist rhetoric manifests itself in the targeting of non-whites based on their supposed ‘un-Britishness’. Institutionalised racism is arguably a residual consequence of colonialism; one that reinforces nationalist survivalists’ concerns. According to the 2023 Baroness Casey Review, public institutions like the Metropolitan Police (the Met) were guilty of ‘acting structurally’ in ways that discriminate against Black Asian Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities.11 The report found that rank-and-file officers
were more likely to target and survey ‘certain groups’ based on skin colour, religious identity, and, indeed, ethnic identity.12 Between 2020 and 2021, 55% of people arrested by the Met were from Asian, Black and mixed ethnic groups.13 Of those arrests, black or black British
individuals were three times more likely to be arrested than their white British counterparts.14 It then naturally follows that within nationalist rhetoric, non-white ethnic identities become a marker of difference, capable of triggering existing structures of discrimination and othering. Britain’s nationalist discourse, therefore, also equates whiteness and proximity to whiteness as a form of social currency – worthy of affording institutional and functional acceptance into its traditional definition of Britishness.
Nationalism’s war waged against multiculturalism is based on the notion that in order for the nation to survive, the natural order must be maintained. In this case, cultural assimilation indicates that the ‘true heart’ of the nation is no longer fully intact. Instead, it has crumbled away and been replaced. The view that multiculturalism encourages groups to “retain and celebrate” their cultural identities over embracing nationalist ‘traditional’ British identity creates a marker of difference that generates the space for othering.15 This, in turn, provides British nationalists with an easy method to distinguish those in the ‘in-group’ and those in the ‘outgroup.’ Notably, race, ethnicity and religion are the easiest targets as they often bring
with them new and interesting cultural traditions and values. This focus on the inferior ‘other’ reinforces ideas found in primordial superiority rhetoric and can be used to justify and reinforce nationalist attacks against multiculturalism.
Braverman is not the first politician or the last to claim multiculturalism is a failed experiment. In an interview with Fox News following the 2017 Westminster Bridge Terrorist attack, Nigel Farage, former leader of UKIP, blamed multiculturalism for creating “divided communities” and “terrorist sympathisers.”16 Similarly, former Prime Minister David Cameron stresses that multiculturalism has “weakened our [Britain’s] collective identity”, leading to radicalisation and “communities behaving in ways that run completely counter to our values.”17 Here, the use of the word “multiculturalism” is beneficial as it provides (although not always successfully) a plausible deniability of being racist. Instead, multiculturalism becomes a buzzword that invokes the notion of a culture war, a fight against disparate traditions and values rather than race-based discrimination. In both examples, the threat of the other is found in acts of terrorism through the adoption of multiculturalism, creating a sense of imminent danger. For Braverman, uncontrolled immigration leads to multiculturalism and is therefore painted as the root of Britain’s problems. Having only cited
two examples of many, this idea of failed multiculturalism has been continuously used in the last decade as a scaremongering tool designed to, at best, build upon already existing prejudice and use multiculturalism as a political scapegoat.
How then can one achieve Britishness? By being white. This obsession with whiteness and proximity to ‘white’ culture has certainly been codified into the very fabric of how nationalists like Braverman define Britishness. The extent to which a given foreigner is considered an asset or threat to Britain’s national identity is thus determined by a willingness to conform to vague traditional values. It is through this racialised lens that nationalists construct meaning and manufacture a sense of danger around the idea of multiculturalism. A danger that, according to them, stems from the simple fact that some cultures, languages, and skin colours are naturally more dangerous than others.
Bibliography
Biersteker, Thomas J., Cynthia Weber, Lawrence Freedman. State Sovereignty as Social Contract. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Casey, Louise. Baroness Casey Review: Final Report. London: Baroness Casey, 2023.
Conservative Home. “It is incumbent upon politicians to ask whether the Refugee Convention…is fit for our modern age. Braverman’s speech in America.”
Conservative Home. Published September 26, 2023. https://conservativehome.com/2023/09/26/it-is-
incumbent-upon-politicians-to-ask-whether-the-refugee-convention-is-fit-for-our-modern-age-bravermans-speech-in-america-full-text/.
Der Derian, James, and Michael J. Shapiro. International/ Intertextual relations: postmodern readings of world politics. Massachusetts: Lexington Books, 1989.
Institute of Race Relations. “Criminal Justice System Statistics.” Institute of Race Relations. Published September 30, 2023. https://irr.org.uk/research/statistics/criminal-justice/.
Traditional Britain Group, “About,” Traditional Britain Group,
https://traditionalbritain.org/about/.
UK Independence Party, “2022 Political Manifesto” UK Independence Party. Published October, 2022 https://www.ukip.org/party-policies
- Conservative Home, “It is incumbent upon politicians to ask whether the Refugee Convention…is fit for our
modern age. Braverman’s speech in America,” Conservative Home, published September 26, 2023,
https://conservativehome.com/2023/09/26/it-is-incumbent-upon-politicians-to-ask-whether-the-refugee-
convention-is-fit-for-our-modern-age-bravermans-speech-in-america-full-text/. ↩︎ - Ibid. ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- Traditional Britain Group, “About,” Traditional Britain Group, https://traditionalbritain.org/about/. ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- Thomas J. Biersteker, Cynthia Weber, Lawrence Freedman State Sovereignty as Social Contract (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996), 13-14. ↩︎ - James Der Derian and Michale J. Shapiro, Shapiro. International/ Intertextual relations: postmodern readings
of world politics (Massachusetts: Lexington Books, 1989), 332. ↩︎ - Conservative Home, “It is incumbent upon politicians to ask whether the Refugee Convention…is fit for our
modern age. Braverman’s speech in America,” Conservative Home, published September 26, 2023,
https://conservativehome.com/2023/09/26/it-is-incumbent-upon-politicians-to-ask-whether-the-refugee-
convention-is-fit-for-our-modern-age-bravermans-speech-in-america-full-text/. ↩︎ - Ibid. ↩︎
- Louise Casey, Baroness Casey Review: Final Report (London: Baroness Casey, 2023), 20.; Institute of Race
Relations, “Criminal Justice System Statistics,” Institute of Race Relations, published September 30, 2023,
https://irr.org.uk/research/statistics/criminal-justice/. ↩︎ - Ibid. ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- UK Independence Party, “2022 Political Manifesto” UK Independence Party, (October, 2022), p.72,
https://www.ukip.org/party-policies. ↩︎ - Farage, Nigel, Interview. By Tucker Carlson, Tucker Carlson Tonight, Fox News. March 22, 2017. ↩︎
- Cameron, David. “PM’s Speech at munich Security Conference,” UK Government, published February 5,
2011, https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pms-speech-at-munich-security-conference. ↩︎
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